Open Mic Night – Colleges Share Their Accomplishments in Sustainability

Our local colleges have been hard at work coming up with ways to reduce their carbon footprints and the results have been significant.  They share their accomplishments in the presentation below. 

Our featured panelists and presenters include the following:

Delicia Nahman, Director of Sustainability, Lafayette College
Delicia will share Lafayette’s two recent constructed LEED-Gold certified green buildings and how they are using them to engage students as living laboratories for measuring building performance and learning first-hand about green building technology.  She will also summarize their faculty research with concentrated solar and improving the efficiency of solar thermal systems.  She will show views of the new solar array on Kirby Sports Center.  Finally, she will introduce their renewable energy purchase contract partnered with Lehigh University to provide a means to clean their electric supply campus-wide.

Doug Spengel, Associate Director, Utilities and Engineering Lehigh University
Doug will continue into more of the back end of the renewable energy purchase partnership with Lafayette and talk about sustainability initiatives at Lehigh, including highlights of their2020 Sustainability Plan, where Sustainability is being incorporated into the academic curriculum; and their purchase of electric buses for student transport.  Doug will share their accomplishments reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions by 24%, diversion of 51% of waste to recycling; the commitment to buy 20% of campus food from local, community-based food sources; and their LEED Gold STEPS building.  Doug will also share energy conservation projects his team has undertaken at Lehigh.   You can view Doug’s presentation slides below:

Rev. Kevin Nadolski, OSFS, Vice President for Mission DeSales University
You can view Rev. Kevin’s presentation slides below:

Liesel Schwarz, Manager of Sustainability at Villanova University
Liesel will share Villanova’s overall Campus sustainability plan, which will help set up the specific topics, including their Green Office Program, their longstanding Stormwater control measures program that has become a resource for education across the state and regionally, and  Plastic Free Lent. You can view Liesel’s presentation slides below:

Join us after their presentations for a lively interchange with our featured presenters and panelists to learn how our local universities are cultivating the next generation of sustainability seekers.